Cosmic Creatures Postmortem

This is a description of my game development process for my short sci-fi action game, Cosmic Creatures.

I had been wanting to make a sci-fi game for a while and thought the IGMC game jam would be a good opportunity to do so. Looking at the theme of Rebirth/Rejuvenation/Resurrection, my initial idea for the story was a space colony overtaken by corrupted creatures, and the player on a mission to restore it. I wanted the gameplay to focus around fast-paced action and shooting mechanics. So began my one-month challenge to create and submit a working game. 

I set out to test my JavaScript programming skills and create a custom action battle system in RPG Maker MZ. Despite being an ambitious undertaking, I felt confident that I could pull it off. It did however take up a large portion of development time. Once the basics of shooting an enemy worked, I wanted some of the enemies to be able to shoot back in barrage of bullet patterns. Designing intricate, challenging, and aesthetically pleasing bullet patterns was the most fun thing to program. 

Next it was time for the level design and artwork. Due to time constraints, I had to limit the number of maps I could feasibly include in the final entry. I set up rough level designs in RPG Maker and created the actual maps as drawings in Photoshop. The drawings were then imported back into the engine and used as parallax maps. 

About halfway through development, I modified the story to include a villain character with a plan to revive a dangerous monster. The monster’s design and its name were inspired by beings from weird fiction / cosmic horror.

One thing I hadn't anticipated was the amount of time creating the animations for the characters and enemies would take. Animations were done using Pyxel Edit. The most complex animation was that of the final boss enemy with its multitude of waving tentacles. It was worth the effort because that was my favorite animation of them all.

Everything came down to the wire as the game jam deadline came closer and closer. I was determined to submit something, so I pushed through and completed the entry on the final day. I sighed with relief once I submitted my game (with barely any time to spare). It was done. 

There are of course things I would like to improve, and features I would have liked to add, but I’m happy with what I was able to accomplish in the given amount of time. I learned a lot during the process of making Cosmic Creatures that I hope to apply to my future games.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope you found it interesting. 

~Britney